OXY STUDENT-ATHLETES PREPARING FOR LIFE WHILE EXCELLING IN SPORTS

By Mirin FaderSports Information

Alexander Graves (Sacramento) stood in a circle
surrounded by several pathologists analyzing a slide of a biopsy at
Sutter General Hospital in Sacramento.

After conferring with each other, one of the doctors hinted that
he had an initial diagnosis in mind. Graves listened quietly for
the answer. Yet the pathologist held back for a second, and with a
voice of confidence in the young intern, he unexpectedly handed
Graves the slide and said: “Alex, what’s the
disease?”

In his nine-week summer internship as an assistant in the
hospital’s pathology department, the sophomore goalie for the
men’s soccer team would often find himself making the
call.

“It challenged me every day,” Graves said. “My
internship inspired me to work even harder in college because I
know now that I want to go to medical school and become a
doctor.”

Part of the reason Graves was able to assess the correct disease
was because he was working closely with two pathologists that would
end up mentoring him, one of which was an Occidental alum, Zarir
Karanjawala ’94.

Graves plans to declare biochemistry as his major this fall as
did Karanjawala during his time in Eagle Rock.

What separates his internship from typical student duties such
as entering endless data into Excel sheets or even coffee fetching
was that he participated in hands-on work that the pathologists
themselves do daily. In addition to being trusted to correctly make
a diagnosis, Graves assisted with autopsies and frozen sections,
dying and analyzing each slide before dissecting and processing
tissue specimen. With a greater exposure to certain kinds of
cancers and diseases, Graves gained critical hands-on knowledge
that will propel him forward in accomplishing his goals in the
medical field.

While Graves remained in his hometown, Adrienne Ruth (Springfield, VA) ventured outside of the
States all the way to Ankara, Turkey for five weeks to work at the
Department of Agriculture’s office at the U.S. Embassy.

The sophomore goalkeeper that totaled 98 saves last season on
the women’s lacrosse team that advanced to the SCIAC
championship game for the first time learned the ins and outs of
the State Department’s system. She assembled documents for
compliance review, escorted visitors, and both delivered and
retrieved passports to the consular section. However, once Ruth was
forced to communicate with the local staff she realized she faced a
critical setback: she didn’t speak Turkish.

“I was so overwhelmed,” Ruth said. “I also had
multiple tasks at one time with many deadlines, but I developed
critical multitasking and organizational skills because of it. It
gave me great insight into how an office really works.”

Though her internship did not directly align with her career
ambitions in the international security field as a Diplomacy and
World Affairs major, Ruth was grateful for the opportunity to work
in a competitive environment overseas. She hopes to expand on her
experience next summer by getting an internship in the State
Department’s Economic, Political or Political Military
affairs office, perhaps with the FBI’s legal attaché
office.

While both Ruth and Graves are still underclassmen, Katelyn Rowe (Carlsbad), a senior forward on the
women’s basketball team, has spent the last four years
building up her resume on and off the court. Most significantly,
she landed an internship her junior year in the U.S.
Attorney’s Office, Central District of California, during
both the fall and spring semesters at the height of basketball
season.

While her team won a fifth consecutive SCIAC regular season
championship by night, Rowe would spend a few days a week in
addition to a full-class load working closely with a paralegal
specialist and the Executive Assistant U.S. Attorney that
specialized in white collar crime and fraud cases. Rowe observed a
variety of federal court cases while performing legal research,
revising documents, and completing administrative tasks. Rowe
excelled in the government’s office, in the classroom at Oxy,
and on the court as a first team all-SCIAC performer, despite
juggling all three.

“Balancing work, classes, practice, and games was hard but
definitely worth the opportunity,” she said. “Our
coaching staff was supportive whenever I was late or missed a
practice. I was able to make up workouts and film sessions in my
free time. I really learned how to manage my time.”

Able to pursue opportunities outside of athletics at Division
III Oxy, Rowe will miss pre-season training to participate in the
college’s United Nations program this fall, working for the
United Kingdom Mission to the U.N in New York. Although Rowe was
recruited to play basketball for Oxy, the U.N. program was one of
the primary reasons the Politics major chose Occidental.

At a Division I university, Rowe would not have been able to
participate in a year-round internship, as off-season training
would have consumed all of her time.

“At Oxy, I haven’t had to sacrifice academics or
work opportunities to continue my sport. I fully intend to come
back and play basketball in the Spring for Oxy, and I am grateful
that our coaches will allow me to do so.”

“Being a Division III athlete has given me the freedom to
pursue many interests outside sports,” he said. “I
think we as student-athletes also have it the hardest because
although we do not have as an intense commitment to sports like
Division I schools do, more is expected of us in terms of
schoolwork and jobs. Division I schools are all about focusing
exclusively on your sport, but there’s much more to a
Division III student-athlete than the sport we play.”

Mirin Fader is the Oxy men’s basketball beat writer.
She also writes feature stories on Oxy athletes, coaches and alums
and spent her summer writing for the WNBA’s Los Angeles
Sparks. A senior this year, Fader hopes to make a career out of
sports journalism.

All of her work, including her archived Oxy stories can be
found at her website: mirinfader.com